


Portrait of a Ranger as a Young Man

by TheSecondBatgirl



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Zeo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 09:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSecondBatgirl/pseuds/TheSecondBatgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At some point, Adam internalized the idea that he was never going to amount to anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portrait of a Ranger as a Young Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mara/gifts).



At some point, Adam internalized the idea that he was never going to amount to anything. Maybe it was the bullying he’d experienced in elementary school. Maybe it was years of being picked last at any sport, and being told that he wasn’t wanted on their team. Maybe it was that he was friends with people who were far more talented and driven than he was (and if that didn’t describe Aisha, he didn’t know what did.)

But the point was, even after he’d discovered martial arts, even after he found he had some talent at writing, the nagging doubts and feelings that he would never belong never quite left him. Even when he was accepted as a ranger, he was still a replacement. Maybe he was only there because they couldn’t take Rocky and Aisha, but not take him.

The doubts came back even stronger as his first few battles happened. He wasn’t sure if he’d been targeted deliberately because he was the weakest link, but with two of his first monster encounters as a Ranger being specifically targeted to his fears, he really couldn’t see how it could be anything else.

It was only the fact that he’d somehow managed to break the spell on the Mirror of Regret that kept him from handing in his Power Coin then and there. (And it hadn’t even been because of something he’d seen, it had been his student succeeding.) Rocky and Aisha had convinced him to keep going, that he was accomplishing things as a Ranger, that he would regret it forever if he quit.

So Adam continued on. He stayed even after Aisha left. He stayed even after Rocky was injured so badly that he was forced to leave. And as the time passed, he began to think that this was something he could do, that he was making a difference by being a Ranger. He postponed all his other plans, didn’t think about college. He just concentrated on being the best Ranger he could be. It didn’t matter that he would never be as good as Tommy, that he would never be a leader. For the first time it felt like his life actually mattered.

And then it was all taken away. It hadn’t been his choice. He knew that Tommy and Kat and Tanya had all wanted to leave, but he just wasn’t ready. Without being a Ranger, he was nothing. But because of a decision that was completely out of his hands, he had lost the only thing that had made him matter.

He tried to move on, he really did. He managed to enroll in the local college, and started trying to figure out what to do with his life. Tried to figure out how to find some meaning when he was no longer a hero. Maybe if he had made other plans. Maybe if he had managed to escape Angel Grove for something different, like the rest of his teammates did. Instead he could just watch - watch as his chosen replacement and the rest of the new team lost a battle. Watch as the zords were destroyed.

Maybe if he hadn’t seen it, he wouldn’t have been so tempted to use the broken morpher. Maybe if he had left, he wouldn’t have ended up in such a bad mental state. Maybe then he wouldn’t have wanted to die, just to feel one last time that he was useful.

But he hadn’t, so he used it.

He just hadn’t expected to survive.

It was only after his morpher nearly killed him, that Adam was able to start moving on. Years passed, and he was able to find something in his life that mattered. He threw himself into working at the dojo he ran with Rocky, helping the next generation build up their self esteem. And the next time he used his repaired morpher, he knew that it wasn’t the morpher that made him a hero. The morpher was just an added bonus.


End file.
